Review: Gods & Kings is an essential Civilization expansion

AI improvements, new gameplay systems round out the base Civ V game.

When it comes to expansions, the Civilization series seems to be trending in the opposite direction of the rest of the game industry. Back in the 1990s, it seemed like every remotely successful game had at least one $20 to $30 expansion pack released around a year after the main game. Yet the first Civilization remained un-expanded, and the expansions for the second title merely amounted to optional collections of scenarios and a disastrous multiplayer version—the Civilization II experience was complete with the original game itself.

By the 2000s, most publishers were prioritizing full sequels over expansion packs, with the exception of massively multiplayer games (Everquest has had eighteen expansions!) or the most popular PC games, like Blizzard’s Warcraft III, Creative Assembly’s Total War series, and the Civilization games. In the last decade or so, expansions have become essential components of the Civilization experience—if you didn’t play Civ III with Conquests, or Civ IV with Warlords and Beyond The Sword, you weren’t getting the best versions of the game. Civilization V: Gods & Kings follows the model of those expansions, delivering more content as well as notable gameplay changes and improvements.

The most impressive aspects of Gods & Kings take place “under the hood.” When I started playing the original Civilization V, two aspects of the game frustrated me. First, my computer started struggling with even modest-sized maps by the Renaissance era, and the 20th Century was virtually unplayable due to excessive time waiting between turns. Second, the computer-controlled opponents were extraordinarily passive, only declaring war on me occasionally, and never on each other, which made the game more artificial. Both are improved in Gods & Kings. I was able to finish games on maps that had previously given me trouble, and the AI was more aggressive, and more successful in that aggression, than I had seen before.

Another major change to the game happened this week before the expansion was even released: Civilization V was added to Steam Workshop, for easier distribution of modifications. Civilization V was a disappointing step back from its predecessor in terms of mod-friendliness, so this is a fairly exciting development if you, like me, sank hours of time into mods like Fall From Heaven or Rhye’s And Fall Of Civilization. While the developers have yet to release the game’s DLL files—the holy grail for in-depth modders—they did say at a GDC panel earlier this year that it was their goal to release them, a move that would increase the long-term play value of Civilization V dramatically.

Gods & Kings introduces two major new gameplay elements: Faith and Espionage. Civilization has struggled with its depiction of religion—I liked Civilization IV’s take on it, but it was divisive enough that it wasn’t included at all in the original form of Civilization V. In Gods & Kings, you earn Faith in the game much like Culture and Gold, and use it to start up a religion. Establishing a religion allows for relatively minor customization traits, like increasing food output when not at war, or giving more Faith on desert tiles. It fits quite well with the overall form of the game, where long-term planning and proper customization lead to victory.

Further Faith can be used to purchase Cathedrals or Pagodas to great effect, but I found the system a little bit too easy to manipulate. When I played using a high Culture/Faith strategy, I was able to dominate the world’s religions too easily, and had more faith than I knew what to do with—which I ended up spending on Great People to maintain a constant state of Golden Age. The system doesn’t seem totally balanced just yet.

Espionage kicks in around the time in a game that Faith becomes less effective, with your first Spy becoming available during the Renaissance. Spies can be used to discover what other civilizations are planning, to bring city-states under your influence, and, in their most important role, to steal technologies from more advanced rivals. One of the largest long-term flaws of Civilization V was the way that it was nearly impossible to catch up with tech leaders—now it’s possible but time-consuming. The best part of Espionage is that it is detached from the map. I avoided the use of spies in previous Civilizations because maneuvering them across the map was slow and didn’t behave like much of the rest of the game. The simple interface and clear benefits of Espionage in Gods & Kings make it the best form of spying in any Civilization game.

There’s also a significant amount of new content in Gods & Kings. As a fan of varied civilizations, I was pleased to see Carthage, the Netherlands, the Celts, and others on offer, each with unique powers that are fairly interesting (the Celts, for instance, gain Faith from forests, giving them a notable early-game advantage). Their leaders are also beautifully depicted—I was particularly impressed by Queen Dido of Carthage, a petite woman under a starry sky. There are also several new units most specifically focused on World War I, which indicates a further prioritization of the later parts of the games.

The one thing that Civilization V: Gods & Kings won’t do is change the core concepts of Civilization V, which have been controversial among fans. The need to plan your victory path well in advance and specialize all of your cities remains critical, and the city-states may have more diverse quests, but they’re still more obtrusive than interesting. But by smoothing out many of the most frustrating aspects of the original form of Civilization V while adding more dimensions, Gods & Kings does everything an effective expansion pack should.

The Good

The game runs smoother and faster than before

Artificial intelligence no longer a total oxymoron

New civilizations and leader heads are excellently done

Modding is easier than before

Simple Espionage system improves issues from previous Civilizations

The Bad

New Faith system intrigues but feels unbalanced

City-states still don’t fit well within the Civilization system

The Ugly

Your face when the Huns bring up one of their battering rams and take down a city almost instantly

I am working through a post-patch playthrough, and it doesn't seem like the AI is any smarter. It still wastes units, doesn't improve the terrain, and is generally retarded at warfare. Further, the diplomatic AI still tends to degenerate into a denounce spiral, where one civ will denounce you, then another, then another, until it's impossible to maintain friendly relations with other civs, and even if you do manage to work your way into the good graces of another civ, all it takes is a single denounce to push them back into guarded and the cycle repeats.

Finally, my previous favorite feature of civ 5 over civ 4, where the game would prompt you to finish movement of units, doesn't work anymore, so you click Next Turn, get up to get coffee (it's 4am, after all), and you come back thinking that you've given the game ample time to go through AI turns, and no. It just realized you need to move units. What used to be one of the most satisfying improvements from 4 to 5 is now an irritant.

Finally, my previous favorite feature of civ 5 over civ 4, where the game would prompt you to finish movement of units, doesn't work anymore, so you click Next Turn, get up to get coffee (it's 4am, after all), and you come back thinking that you've given the game ample time to go through AI turns, and no. It just realized you need to move units. What used to be one of the most satisfying improvements from 4 to 5 is now an irritant.

This. Thanks to the aforementioned long-ass wait times between turns, I usually hit "Next Turn" and turn my attention to something else for a minute. It's not nice to see that nothing happened.

So is this expansion only out for the PC version? I assume so, but wanted to confirm that it also isn't launching on the Mac version yet. Fortunately, I did buy this through Steam, so I suppose I could just boot up the Windows partition, download it on that side, and then buy the expansion, playing it there until they get around to the Mac port.

I think the last time an expansion didn't disappoint me was the pair of expansions for Morrowind (Tribunal and Bloodmoon), however Dawnguard for Skyrim has me excited. As far as strategy games, I'd have to say the Firestorm expansion for C&C: Tiberian Sun was excellent, put a really good twist in the story, forcing GDI and the Brotherhood of Nod into a temporary, and extremely tenuous, alliance to take down CABAL. And unfortunately, it was a high point of the Tiberium saga... RIP Westwood Studios... hopefully Bioware Victory does the series justice with Generals 2...

I'm playing CiV on my MacBook Pro late 2008, so I really welcome a smoother experience. What I am really missing from CIV are the random events that were included with BtS. I thought they were a great change of pace in the game especially when you played on marathon speeds and they felt just natural.

I'm still over excited about this add-on and can't wait for friday to come (there goes my weekend).

One thing I'm still wondering: are they EVER going to include the cool future stuff that CTP and CTPII brought on the table?

After playing Crusader Kings II I'm not sure if I can go back to a game like Civilization. I can understand someone powergaming it or whatever, but I like to basically role-play big strategy games like Civ. That was pretty hard in Civ V when the diplomacy was so horrible. My one big playthrough was just a really boring string of wars that I would eventually win. It just didn't feel at all like any version of history I've ever read.

In CKII, OTOH, you get all kinds of crazy non-war stuff. In my current game, the most interesting character wasn't me - it was my sister-in-law. She had one male child and then went about murdering anyone she could to make him the heir to my dynasty. I eventually saw that it was better to just let her win. She also managed to marry him off to a Duchess (don't know how) and she later became a Countess and successfully fought several wars. I'm now playing as the son and have become the King of Sweden. I wish she was still around to deal with all these treacherous Swedes ...

There's just nothing like that in Civ. It's more like, you've traded some sugar with Ghandi and next turn he declares war on you. Whatever.

and the city-states may have more diverse quests, but they’re still more obtrusive than interesting

Always conquer city states. They quite literally aren't worth the trouble of appeasing.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Maritime states let your cities focus on production, gold, and culture instead of food, especially if you have several of them. Cultural states can save you a ton of gold on culture buildings (upkeep is expensive!) for a pretty modest amount of gold. Military states are mostly useless though, go ahead and conquer them. A "free" out of date unit that is outside of your empire but still costs you upkeep is not a prize.

City states can contribute a pretty hefty chunk of science too once you get about halfway down the Patronage branch. Being all friendly with the city states also lets you keep the UN victory in your back pocket should one of the other civs start running away with the game.

After playing Crusader Kings II I'm not sure if I can go back to a game like Civilization. .

I guess i'm the opposite. Try as i might, paradox games just bore me to death. I gave Crusader Kings II several chances, and the only thing i see is a game where you wait for random events to happen and thats pretty much about it.

Considering how flawed Civ 5 was, and how thin this review is, I find it hard to have faith in the "Buy It" verdict at the end.

As mentioned everywhere on the net, Civ 5s time to complete AI turns was atrocious. Even on a tiny world with a few AI players and on a hot rod machine, the wait was beyond tolerable. Improvements to this are barely mentioned in the article. It's faster? How much faster? 10%? 5%? Tolerable? Did you even play the game long enough for the gameplay to become more complex?

And the AI was some of the worst I've even played. I could take two units and defend a city against an endless swarm of opposing forces. 10 to 1 or 20 to 1 kill ratios on higher game difficulties were common. The AI doesn't need to be "more aggressive" and send more units, it needs to stop throwing them away in a senseless assault with a total lack of tactical thought.

Something else I miss from earlier Civ games: the challenge. Every time I've tried to play Civ 5, I either get massively overpowered early in the game, or I massively overpower the world early in the game. In older versions there was an element of struggle, and of the unknown. Balances shifted, bordered moved up and down, and some suspense was created. Not in Civ 5. It's all or nothing.

Civ III was a game that they continued to patch through multiple patch levels of the original game and all through the two expansions, so that it was only truly complete (pun intended) with the Conquests expansion. Civ IV was an excellent game from launch and the two expansions only added depth. Civ IV and Civ IV: BTS are two very different games - both of them good, but with the original more open and BTS more focused on the real Civ fan (as it should be). From this article, it sounds like Civ V follows Civ III in this. If so, I advice everyone to pass at least until the first two patches are out. Personally, I think I'll wait until they announce Civ VI to buy this one.

One thing I'm still wondering: are they EVER going to include the cool future stuff that CTP and CTPII brought on the table?

Civilization: Call to Power (CTP) was Activision's attempt to steal the Civilization name from its creators (they bought a company that made a Civilization card game back in the thirties, and the Civ owners struck back by buying another company that made a Civilization board game even earlier). As part of the settlement, Activision could sell exactly one game with the word Civilization in it - namely CTP - and could then make more games without that as the supertitle. There was only ever one - CTP2 - which didn't sell without the Civilization name, so the franchise was dropped. I would guess that Firaxis is staying far away from anything related to CTP to avoid reopening that can of lawsuits.

So is this expansion only out for the PC version? I assume so, but wanted to confirm that it also isn't launching on the Mac version yet. Fortunately, I did buy this through Steam, so I suppose I could just boot up the Windows partition, download it on that side, and then buy the expansion, playing it there until they get around to the Mac port.

Nope. Wonders of wonders, the Mac version was released alongside the PC version. I downloaded it this morning, though I haven't had a chance to actually fire it up yet.

You mention the AI- a significant flaw in Civ 5- in both the opening blurb and the bullet points at the end, but don't discuss it at all in the article. What did you notice about the AI?

Right now, the only comments I've seen about the AI were Rock Paper Shotgun's review, which seemed to basically amount to it being a bit smarter about unit movement but still a mess diplomatically.

Indeed. I played Civ V when it first came out for a couple of months. The AI was so completely inept that I just didn't have any desire to play after the novelty wore off.

When I read comments like this I feel like I must be a complete dunce at these games. In Civ V I can't play on higher than Prince level without being handily crushed. I should probably read some strategy guides.

The only issue I've had with the AI is, for example, the game I was playing last week. Two different civs attacked me when I had a bunch of cities and they each just had one. After a few turns of repelling them, they had wasted all their units and I was able to conquer them. There's some realism in them under-estimating my strength and my ability to push out units once the war started. But if they didn't have enough units for a good war, they should have probably sued for peace or not sent every one of their units against me.

Someone above mentioned the denouncing. I just made a game out of it in my last game. Every time a civ denounced me, I eliminated their civ. You'd think eventually the others would learn.... But, seriously, there was a Civ I'd been uber-friendly with and all of a sudden they denounced me out of nowhere. Seemed too random.

So is this expansion only out for the PC version? I assume so, but wanted to confirm that it also isn't launching on the Mac version yet. Fortunately, I did buy this through Steam, so I suppose I could just boot up the Windows partition, download it on that side, and then buy the expansion, playing it there until they get around to the Mac port.

Nope. Wonders of wonders, the Mac version was released alongside the PC version. I downloaded it this morning, though I haven't had a chance to actually fire it up yet.

So is this expansion only out for the PC version? I assume so, but wanted to confirm that it also isn't launching on the Mac version yet. Fortunately, I did buy this through Steam, so I suppose I could just boot up the Windows partition, download it on that side, and then buy the expansion, playing it there until they get around to the Mac port.

Nope. Wonders of wonders, the Mac version was released alongside the PC version. I downloaded it this morning, though I haven't had a chance to actually fire it up yet.

So is this expansion only out for the PC version? I assume so, but wanted to confirm that it also isn't launching on the Mac version yet. Fortunately, I did buy this through Steam, so I suppose I could just boot up the Windows partition, download it on that side, and then buy the expansion, playing it there until they get around to the Mac port.

Nope. Wonders of wonders, the Mac version was released alongside the PC version. I downloaded it this morning, though I haven't had a chance to actually fire it up yet.

After playing Crusader Kings II I'm not sure if I can go back to a game like Civilization. .

I guess i'm the opposite. Try as i might, paradox games just bore me to death. I gave Crusader Kings II several chances, and the only thing i see is a game where you wait for random events to happen and thats pretty much about it.

I'm sure you've read some of the crazy things that happen to people, but it's kinda' like Dwarf Fortress. I was till quite confused 10 hours into CK2, and that was after 100 hours of the first one. (DF took a good 40 hours to understand like 80% of the systems).

There really are a lot of things fo the player to be working on, but it's not obvious how. For example, if you have no claims you might wait around for your Chancellor to fabricate some. Instead, you could probably go around looking for a claimant to invite to your court and push their claim. And then if you do this successfully it might be tricky for them to become your vassal or not lose the county when they die. So, yeah, just doing basic stuff like attacking a neighbor is really confusing in CK2. OTOH, that's what stops the Holy Roman Empire from just destroying you at a whim. Being able to build up your "civ" in the shadow of giants is impossible in Civilization.

It'd be cool if Paradox (or someone else) could create a game with the interesting random "story" elements, but not have it be so confusing and time consuming.

For reasons I cannot explain, I have just never given the Civilization series a chance. I always feel like I'm missing out on something integral to gaming culture and would like to give the series its fair shake. Which version would be best for a newcomer to the series, in the forum's opinion? Should I just start with the latest one and forget about the history of the series, or is the series now appealing more to diehard grognards?

For reasons I cannot explain, I have just never given the Civilization series a chance. I always feel like I'm missing out on something integral to gaming culture and would like to give the series its fair shake. Which version would be best for a newcomer to the series, in the forum's opinion? Should I just start with the latest one and forget about the history of the series, or is the series now appealing more to diehard grognards?

Civ II or V. No others are really needed. II is where the magic really was, V might get there soon.

I've never liked Civs take on religion. It ended up mostly being similar to espionage. I would be fine if religion never came to another Civ game except as an alternate player type. Meaning I could play as a religion instead of a civilization and I had end game conditions based on other things than the space race. So I might have to do some diplomacy with a civilization to plop down my religious sites in to their cities. Maybe they change their mind and oust my religion from their civilization so one of my other civilization friends starts attacking to reclaim the holy land. Hmmm... that sounds like things that happened in history more than the Roman Catholic church being a spy for the Italian government.

And now I have to wait three days to play this because I don't happen to live in North America? Yeah, talk about ridiculous.

Still, speaking of Civilization V and Crusader Kings 2. I have been playing all of Paradox's games steady since 2009, and I can certainly say, they are my kind of games. Each nation is so different, because of their biased position from the beginning, that they offer unique and different game plays. And this amounts for all their games; Europa Universalis 3, Hearts of Iron 3 and Victoria 2 as well. Although, I do prefer Arsenal of Democracy to Hearts of Iron 3, but I haven't tried the latter with the expansions, so it might be premature.

But Civilization is a game I have been playing since the early 1990s. And it's not just out of tradition (I have stopped doing many things when they stopped interesting me), but because Civilization is a different type of game. Where Paradox games are more simulation-like games, Civilization is more of a board game. And once you realise that it is just a board game, many of its features make a lot more sense. Gameplay-wise.

But I still have to wait three days?! What manner of old retail thinking is this shit!

For reasons I cannot explain, I have just never given the Civilization series a chance. I always feel like I'm missing out on something integral to gaming culture and would like to give the series its fair shake. Which version would be best for a newcomer to the series, in the forum's opinion? Should I just start with the latest one and forget about the history of the series, or is the series now appealing more to diehard grognards?

I'd really recommend Civ 4 Beyond the Sword as the pinnacle of the Civ series so far. The gameplay meshes, and I think they hit the nail on the head with expansion, economy, and diplomacy with it, at least where compared with other civ games.

Civ 5 is a "streamlined" civilization game which has a better combat system (hexes with 1 unit per tile), but is generally worse in pretty much every other aspect. Combat has never been the most fun part of the game for me, and even civ 5 combat is fairly mediocre, especially with the poor AI.

I still enjoy CivIV the most. I dislike how much religion plays a part in it, but trying to rule the world works wonderfully. Not so with CivV. I feel diplomacy has become what religion was in CivIV and I am a warmongerer. Not only that but CivIV runs better on my laptop, which is great for playing it on an airplane. I would still like a Civ game for my tablet, but unfortunately there are only clones. Can't they port Civ II or III to android already. I guess there is hope for Windows Surface Pro to be able to play it.